<p>" That you had to give something up – she gave up some household chores like cooking and cleaning (she even admitted never once making a Halloween costume for her kids)."</p>
<p>Why were those seen as HER chores that got delegated to the housekeeper, though? That’s what bugs me here. Look, I’ve had a full time housekeeper/nanny since my kids were a year old. But she didn’t relieve MY chores. She relieved household chores.</p>
<p>I’m with oldfort.</p>
<p>I don’t have kids. However, at what point does a nanny go from just doing “chores” to the point where they are raising the kid?</p>
<p>Also, at least in terms of the importance of interaction with the kid to that kid’s development, I don’t think the mother and father are interchangeable. I think this is especially true with infants.</p>
<p>“LOL. I have lived this. I don’t WFH now but still, it seems that any time I’m on the phone at home, my dogs start barking their idiot heads off about something or nothing, and I have to go into the bathroom and shut the door to have any hope of continuing the conversation”</p>
<p>I could never work at home. My dogs use every chance they have to pin me on the couch and prevent me from moving and getting anything useful done (except for feeding them). And when I’m on the phone, the little one snores so loud the person on the other end can’t even hear what I’m saying.</p>
<p>“However, at what point does a nanny go from just doing “chores” to the point where they are raising the kid?”</p>
<p>Plenty of men work full time and aren’t accused of not raising their own children. I wonder why it’s different for women.</p>
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<p>I think you’re sharing the raising of the kid with the nanny – just as you might share it with a relative. And this bothers me because nannies disappear out of kids’ lives in a way that relatives rarely do. </p>
<p>In the family I grew up in, both of my parents worked full-time, and my grandmother took care of my sister and me while they were at work. My grandmother was always the adult I felt closest to – far more so than my mother or father. </p>
<p>As my sister and I grew older, my grandmother’s role diminished. Eventually, she only came to our house for a few hours after school. Still later, we were adolescents with no need for child care, and she became an ordinary grandmother whom we saw at family occasions rather than a combination grandmother/child care provider. But she didn’t disappear out of our lives while we were still children. That didn’t happen until I was in college, when she developed Alzheimer’s disease and then died a few years later.</p>
<p>Here’s what bothers me: What if, instead of my grandmother, I had been cared for by a paid nanny? The nanny would have been unlikely to stay with our family the entire time that my sister and I were growing up. People change jobs more often than that, and someone who wants a full-time job would not have wanted to stay with our family when the kids grew older and my parents only needed part-time help.</p>
<p>What happens to kids who bond to the nanny the way I bonded to my grandmother – and then the nanny vanishes from their lives? Is this damaging to the children?</p>
<p>I’m asking this question seriously because I really don’t know the answer.</p>
<p>My kids weren’t raised by a nanny, but they did have a part time nanny when they were babies through middle school while I went to nursing school part time and then worked (mostly part time). They loved her, and they are connected to her to this day, though they don’t see her very often now since they are in college. They visit her on breaks, though and keep up with each other via facebook and emails. </p>
<p>They seem to have come through just fine.</p>
<p>People do come and go throughout our lives; that’s normal. Even loving grandparents don’t stick around permanently, as my kids found out recently when my Mom passed away unexpectedly just before Christmas.</p>
<p>Well, no worries here. We have had the same person since my kids were a year old, and now that they are gone, H and I still keep her on as a housekeeper because I couldn’t possibly let someone go at this point; that would be morally wrong, to throw her out on the street and say “go find another family.”</p>
<p>It’s amazing though that no one seems to worry that kids are damaged by having a different teacher in 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th grades. And they spend more time with that teacher than they would with a daycare provider. </p>
<p>I note as well that if a widower hires help, no one says, “oh, Bob works and the nanny raises the children.”</p>
<p>This thread is fascinating to me. In my opinion, it’s evolved into two separate matters: WFH and working mothers. Perhaps the issues overlap because it is still generally the mothers that do more of the hands on parenting, organize child care, and want flexibility because of it. Aside from breastfeeding, I cannot understand why parenting is MORE the mom’s responsibility (and it is in my home, work world, and community). I think working moms are scrutinized for the choices way more than working dads.
I think some jobs are great candidates for WFH - if there are proper protocols in place to ensure productivity. It’s not fair to the office workers if the WFHers have less accountability/expectations for the same pay/benefits. I prefer to be in the office for many of the reasons cited above by others. I think a CEO has the right to change some rules with proper communication and phase in periods. I do sympathize with those at Yahoo, though, and wonder if the productive WFHers will now face terrible commutes or feel a need to work elsewhere because others did not produce as expected. When I worked from home, my kids were in school or child care and there was no housework going on. All that being said, PLEASE, let’s hold the working dads to the same standards as the working moms!</p>
<p>“Aside from breastfeeding, I cannot understand why parenting is MORE the mom’s responsibility (and it is in my home, work world, and community). I think working moms are scrutinized for the choices way more than working dads.”</p>
<p>Because you’ve got men like collegealum314 above, who hold a double standard. And women let them get away with it.</p>
<p>Well I breastfed forever! </p>
<p>As a kid I experience both times when my mother was home a lot and when she wasn’t. (Also times of having a ridiculous number of servants and none at all.) My mother went back and got her degree when I was 12. She sometimes tells us how guilty she felt about giving us TV dinners or pizza, but I remember loving those meals and feeling that it was cool that she was going to get her degree. She didn’t miss anything important in my life that I can remember. I had a great time reading all her child psychology textbooks.</p>
<p>Marian - have you read the book The Help? Very touching story that actually talked quite a bit about how the black women would essentially raise the white children and how much they would love them, but they weren’t even allowed to use the same toilet in the house. </p>
<p>Here’s my take on it - society has diminished the role of mothering. You also can’t have it all at the same time. And as more women choose to have children without the benefit of marriage it’s going to make it all the more difficult to find the balance.</p>
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…Well, as long as you don’t attempt to home school…then Germany will come after you will all the force of law behind it…fines and even jail time.</p>
<p>That’s a tradeoff I’m willing to make.</p>
<p>“It sounded like it was too many to fire.”</p>
<p>How could that be? If they aren’t even logging in from home, then obviously they weren’t contributing to the company. Why can’t you fire as many unproductive people as you need to? It’s never stopped any other CEO.</p>
<p>Frankly, if I had the kind of employee who was drawing a salary while doing nothing at home all day, I wouldn’t want him/her in the office, either. There are plenty of folks out there who’d do the job with real motivation, not just if/when someone is peeking over their shoulder.</p>
<p>Romani: Interesting. I wouldn’t be willing to trade 6 months of stay at home time in return for losing control over the next 17.5 years of educational options.</p>
<p>There are Federal notice regulations when you fire above a certain number of people.</p>
<p>Perhaps, after the shakeout Mayer will reconsider her telecommuting policy a few months down the road for quality employees who are mega commuters and when gas prices rise to nearly $5/gallon. She may gradually allow Work at Home Fridays or whatever day of the week.</p>
<p>[Bay</a> Area tops new ‘mega-commuter’ Census list defining the worst trips to work - San Jose Mercury News](<a href=“Bay Area tops new ‘mega-commuter’ Census list defining the worst trips to work – The Mercury News”>Bay Area tops new ‘mega-commuter’ Census list defining the worst trips to work – The Mercury News)
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<p>Dietz, homeschooling would be my last resort after exhausting every possible alternative so I don’t see it as any kind of sacrifice.</p>
<p>I considered homeschooling for my oldest, but for various reasons elected to keep him in school, and accelerate on our own time. The Germans are very rule oriented, it’s great when you agree with the rules, not so much when you don’t. It was very interesting to live and work there, and then to have a kid there. I experience a little bit of everything including being on unemployment insurance in the middle of it. But there’s nothing like an extended stay in a country to realize how American you are - my hat is off to immigrants who are able to say goodbye to their culture of origin. </p>
<p>In any event we left Germany when my oldest was six months old, so school options were never an issue.</p>